Theresa May was legally safe but morally wanting on Grenfell Tower

This was a Theresa May that had been kept well hidden of late. A prime minister in control of her brief, taking some responsibility for her own actions and talking in meaningful sentences. Giving a statement on the Grenfell Tower fire, she updated the Commons on the investigation so far, insisted there would be nowhere to hide for any guilty parties and reminded herself of the commitment she had made when she first assumed office to govern on behalf of those who feel left out of the political process.

In the gallery above, 10 survivors of the blaze looked on. Their expressions gave little away. Most feel that the government went awol in the immediate aftermath of the blaze, so they may not yet be inclined to give the prime minister the benefit of the doubt, but at least May’s statement was a step in the right direction. Better late than never.

Jeremy Corbyn tried to push May into joining up the dots. He wanted her to acknowledge that Conservative cuts to local government had led to councils being less than rigorous in enforcing health and safety regulations, and to explain why the recommendations from the 2013 report into the Lakanal House fire had not been taken up.

This was a step too far for the prime minister. She ignored the Labour leader’s observations on austerity, while insisting that all the recommendations from the Lakanal fire had been acted on. All the coroner had said was that landlords should be encouraged to retrofit sprinkler systems, not that it was mandatory.

So as long as someone from the council’s health and safety department had said to the council’s building services division that it might be a good idea to fit a sprinkler system, then everything was just hunky dory. Then the building services division was free to think about the advice for a couple of nanoseconds before legally ignoring it.

Here the sound of backs being covered were all too audible. As home secretary Theresa May had been responsible for fire safety and it had been on her watch that successive housing ministers, including her new chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, had sat on a review urging the guidance to be made binding. Legally she was in the right. Morally she was found wanting.

As if to prove he hadn’t really been listening to anything anyone had been saying, Iain Duncan Smith chipped in to observe that it might be a lot better all round if the government just knocked every tower block down and rehoused everyone in nice homes with gardens. May made little effort to take his suggestion seriously. The issue wasn’t about knocking tower blocks down, it was about making them safe. Besides, she wasn’t about to commit her government to a £60bn social housebuilding scheme when she might need the money to settle the EU divorce bill.

Labour’s Emma Dent Coad, the newly elected MP for Kensington, used her first parliamentary intervention to suggest the government might want to rethink its cuts to the fire services. The prime minister was adamant that all of the fire crews she had spoken to had had all the resources they required. This wasn’t the way it had looked to everyone who had watched events unfold on TV.

As the session went on, a consensus was reached that something must be done about any tower blocks – the prime minister was unable to confirm how many there were – that were found to have been clad in flammable panels. If not who would pay for it. While hinting that the government was willing to stump up some money, May was unwilling to underwrite the full costs. Expect more cuts to council services to pay for retrofitting to buildings that were done up on the cheap because of cuts to council services.

Though many Tories lined up to praise May for the sensitivity and speed with which she had responded to the disaster, some Labour MPs began to suspect a slight edge of shiftiness in her responses. Hilary Benn opted for the direct approach. Was the cladding on Grenfell Tower compliant with fire regulations when the retrofitting was done? Yes or no?

The prime minister couldn’t quite answer that, so Yvette Cooper had another go. Still May stonewalled, suggesting she didn’t want to say anything that might be prejudicial to a police investigation. Labour reluctantly backed off temporarily, but if some collars aren’t felt in the next couple of days the prime minister is soon likely to find herself back for further questioning.